It's all Greek Italian to me!

Ancient Greeks have all the fun in modern scholarly talk of the Mediterranean. I'm in an archaeology class right now where we talk about what was going on in Bronze Age Greece and it is fascinating. The massive variety of art and architecture over time and across different local regions, the incredibly complex representations of spiritual beliefs, the politics, the ecology... it's amazing! And later, after the Bronze Age, everyone knows about Homer and Pythagoras and Plato and all those philosophers. It seems like then, out of nowhere, the Romans just sort of spring up out of nowhere in Italy and steal all Greece's deities and give them new names before conquering half the known world. What the heck?

Of course the "Romans" were doing things before they were Romans. In fact, they probably didn't even come from Italy-- even their founding legend was of how they escaped from Troy, settled in Italy and then basically conquered the Sabines for their women. There were even more peoples than the Sabines in Italy before the Romans, though, most famously the Etruscans, who themselves had really deep and complex religion and social order, though apparently no one cares about them. Where are all the cool classes on ancient Italians, I ask you?

I must be honest. I'm asking mainly because being myself of Italian heritage, I want to be able to brag about my awesome dead ancestors. And, being specifically of Sicilian heritage, I hold onto the faint hope that I'm ever-so-distantly related to those folks who made Sicily the ancient home of sex, drugs, and if not rock'n'roll, at least crazy ecstatic orgies and Underworld For Dummies cults.

Now, all this is a somewhat significant digression from the point of this post, which is to say that two nights ago I did the impossible: I made ravioli. By hand. In a college basement kitchen. By myself. Lots of them. And tonight for dinner under the 80 degree sun I decided I would like to eat some.

Now I'm going to come clean with the facts: of course ravioli are not "ancient" Italian at all. In fact, they were only described in cookbooks as early as in the 14th century and were a far cry from the ravioli we know today. Despite this, the gathering of the female half of the family to my Nana's house every major holiday for hand-making ravioli makes them seem awfully important to me.

As usual, I didn't pay much attention to my recipe proportions. The dough is made from approximately 2 C water, 2 eggs and a good guzzle of olive oil until it all came together. I kneaded it for a few minutes and then let it rest for 15-20 while I prepared the fillings.

Tonight's batch was stuffed with what I'm going to call "parsley portobello parmesan filling with mashed cannellini beans". I served it with some fresh-made simple red sauce made with just some crushed tomato, a big onion stump, a nice glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper (I didn't take two and a half hours on pasta to use jarred!), topped off with just a little bit more of the nice parmesan in the filling and a good sprinkle of parsley.  It all came together even better than I had hoped, with a nice contrast between the earthy, heavy ravioli and the soft and chunky piquant onion-sweet sauce. My "Ancient Italians Are People Too" rant grew out of how chthonic the plating of this dish looks, all red-and-black-and-white, like I imagine an old vase dedicated to Kore in her most terrible might be, and the fact that I put it together while swishing around the kitchen in mid-shin length dress that makes me feel like one of those vase ladies myself!

I have more ravioli than this waiting for me in the freezer, too, but different flavors. Look forward to seeing future posts about some nice garlicky spinach-and-cheese ravs and sage butternut ones too! I know I'm excited.

But finally, I'll leave you with one more picture, proving that I'm not all class nor do I often (off the blog, anyway) pretend to be.

"Cake for Two", the box promised, and with its included heart shaped pans how could one resist? The gent's mom actually sent it (the boxed mix, that is) to us for Valentine's Day, though we just now got around to making it. Unfortunately, the question of resistance is easily answered by the fact that this cake tastes like chomping straight baking soda from the jar. My midnight chipperness seen in this photo was quickly deflated by the sad discovery that anything with chocolate frosting could be bad.